Primitivism in
Russian Futurist
Book Design 1910–14
In the introduction to his book “Primitivism” in 20th
Century Art, William Rubin notes the relative paucity of
scholarly works devoted to “primitivism—the interest of
modern artists in tribal art and culture, as revealed in
their thought and work.”1 While considerable attention
has been paid to primitivism in early-twentieth-century
French and German art in the time since Rubin’s 1984
publication, Western awareness of a parallel trend in
Russia remains relatively limited to scholars and specialists. Yet, the primary characteristics that Russian artists’
recognized and revered in primitive art forms played as
profound a role in shaping the path of modern art and
literature in Russia as they did in the artistic expressions
of Western Europe. “Primitive” and “primitivism,” as
they are used in this text, are defined as art or an art
style that reveals a primacy and purity of expression.
There is little or no regard for laws dictated or imposed
by nature, science, academic instruction, or convention.
In no sense are these terms meant to be derogatory or
pejorative, however. Indeed, so-called primitive artists
bore with pride the names that their critics called
them—barbarians or savages—and they were not offended by accusations that they were “uncivilized.”
The primitivist movement in Russia (1909–14)
bridged the period between Symbolism (1904–08) and
the styles that most distinguish the early Russian avantgarde—Cubo-Futurism, Alogism, and Rayism (1912–14),
and Suprematism (1915–20). Embracing primitivism
and Neo-primitivism (the latter was so named by its pro-
33
PRIMITIVISM IN RUSSIAN FUTURIST BOOK DESIGN
ponents in 1913), Russian artists such as Mikhail
Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich, and
Olga Rozanova espoused the fundamental aesthetic principles and theories, set the priorities, and developed the
courage to abandon naturalism in art in favor of free creation, pure expression, and, ultimately, abstraction.
The present work focuses on the illustrated
book as the ideal framework in which to examine primitivism in Russia. Through this medium, artists and writers of the emerging avant-garde achieved one of the
most original responses to, and modern adaptations of,
primitivism, and realized the primary goals and aesthetic
credos set forth in their statements and group manifestos. These artists drew on a wide range of primitive
art forms from their own country: Old Russian illuminated manuscripts, miniatures, wood carvings, icons, and
hand-painted religious woodcuts; antiquities and works
dating from pre-Christianized Russia (particularly those
of the Scythians and other Asiatic peoples); folk art,
such as lubki (popular prints, usually hand-colored),
blockbooks, toys, shop signs, distaffs, and embroidery;
and the work of “modern” primitives (children, selftaught artists, commercial sign painters, and the
nomadic tribes of Siberia and Central Asia).
The book form allowed Russian artists to
explore new materials and techniques. Images could be
reduced to their essentials, and elements of color could
be embraced in their primacy. Collaborations between
artists and poets increased the expressive potential of
Jared Ash
Fig. 1. Letter V (detail) from
Archangelic Evangelists. Early 13thcentury manuscript. State Historical
Museum, Moscow
Fig. 2. “Ladder of St. John,” from a
16th-century manuscript. The Paul
M. Fekula Collection
34
PRIMITIVISM IN RUSSIAN FUTURIST BOOK DESIGN
the written word and letter forms. This collective effort
challenged the established practices in book design, art,
and poetry, and advanced a shared political and ideological platform. Russian art and poetry were revitalized,
making them more reflective of the Russian people, their
spirit and traditions. Blurring the lines between “high”
and “low” art, these books showed an equal reverence
for the images of everyday and those of the sacred.
These innovative approaches to the concept of the book
meant that Russian artists could claim their own
achievements, outside of Western influences.
The characteristics most commonly associated
with Western primitivism2 were already evident in Russian
art by 1907–08. Reviews of exhibitions and articles on
artistic developments and trends in Russia document an
awareness on the part of both artists and their audience
of “that primitivism to which contemporary painting has
come.”3 Works shown in 1908 at the Wreath-Stephanos
exhibition in Moscow and at the Contemporary Trends in
Art exhibition in St. Petersburg were noted by critics for
their distortion, “’simplification of form’ taken to
‘absolute naïveté,’”4 and the bold and expressive use of
bright colors and “nervous brushstrokes.”5
Like the Fauves, Cubists, and German
Expressionists, Russian artists who embraced primitivism
aspired toward “realism” in painting (the depiction of
“the essence of objects”) as opposed to “naturalism”
(“the outward imitation of their form”).6 As the writer
Aleksandr Shevchenko explains in his 1913 essay NeoPrimitivism: Its Theory, Its Potentials, Its Achievements:
“We can no longer be satisfied with a simple organic
copy of nature. We have grown used to seeing it around
us altered and improved by the hand of man the creator,
and we cannot but demand the same of Art.”7
Heightened awareness of contemporary trends
and developments in Western art affirmed, encouraged,
and further fueled non-naturalistic tendencies. Russian
artists themselves cite their introduction to PostImpressionism as having provided the initial impetus for
Russian Neo-primitivism. Western artists whose influences are most clearly seen in early Russian primitivism
(1907–09) are Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and
Paul Gauguin, in whose works, suggested David Burliuk
in 1908, could be found “hopes for the rebirth of
Russian painting.”8 Several years later, Burliuk hailed
these three artists’ rediscovery of “works of ‘barbaric’ art
(the Egyptians, the Assyrians, Scythians, etc.)” as “the
sword that smashed the chains of conventional academicism . . . so that in color and design (form) it [art] could
move from the darkness of slavery toward the path of
bright springtime and freedom.”9 By extension, Russian
artists also admired French contemporaries in whose
works they recognized a furthering of the aesthetic principles espoused by Cézanne, van Gogh, and Gauguin.
Most notably, these were Henri Matisse, Georges Braque,
Pablo Picasso, and Kees van Dongen, to whose works
and writings Russian artists had been introduced through
reproductions in art journals, exhibitions, private collections, and independent travel and study abroad.
As Shevchenko explains in Neo-Primitivism,
“The word neoprimitivism on the one hand testifies to
our point of departure, and on the other—with its prefix,
neo—reminds us also of its involvement in the painterly
traditions of our age.”10 Like Matisse and Picasso,
Russians such as Larionov, Goncharova, and Malevich
based their work on a synthesis of the principles found
in primitive art forms and Post-Impressionist paintings.
Of the primitive art forms that were of greatest
interest to their Western counterparts, those for which
Russian artists shared an enthusiasm include Japanese
and Chinese woodcuts, Persian and Indian miniatures
and manuscripts, Egyptian and Byzantine art, children’s
drawings, and decorated ritual objects. In his essay
“Principles of the New Art” (1912), Vladimir Markov
notes: “The ancient peoples and the East did not know
our scientific rationality. These were children whose feelings and imagination dominated logic . . . naïve, uncorrupted children who intuitively penetrated the world of
beauty and who could not be bribed by realism or by scientific investigations into nature.”11
While Russian artists were familiar with, and
had access to, many of the same foreign art forms as
their European contemporaries,12 works to which Russian
artists were most drawn and are most reflected in their
own art are those that they encountered outside the
walls of collections and institutions, in the villages and
cities of Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia. As Evgenii
Kovtun notes, Russian artists “had on their very own
doorstep an active deposit of peasant art from which
their art drew direct stimulus. There was no need to sail to
Tahiti, as Gauguin had done; an artist need only head for
Viatka or Tula province in order to come across remote,
sometimes even archaic, traditions of popular art.”13
In 1912, when Aleksei Kruchenykh introduced
the practice of using handwritten texts for Old-Time Love
(p. 66) and A Game in Hell (p. 70), he was motivated by
more than merely the desire to perpetuate the assault on
accepted trends and traditional aesthetics of book design
that had been launched with the pages printed on wallpaper in A Trap for Judges (1910; p. 63) and the sackcloth covers of A Slap in the Face of Public Taste: In
Defense of Free Art, Verse, Prose, Essays (1912; p. 63).
Recognizing the expressive potential of handwritten
words and letters, and the attention paid to the visual
form of the text in traditional Russian art, Kruchenykh
and others devoted themselves to restoring the importance assigned to the written word found in ancient
texts, ideographic writing, and hieroglyphics, and urged
“wordwrights” “to entrust their children to an artist, not
a typesetter.”14 As the collective introduction to A Trap
for Judges II (1913; p. 63) proclaims, “We began to
endow words with content on the basis of their graphic
and phonic characteristics,”15 and in doing so, recaptured the cohesion of text and imagery found in traditional forms of the past.
Artists and authors recognized religious manuscripts as works in which “the life of letters” is well understood, noting the love with which “the illuminations [and]
the letters are embellished.”16 Using words such as
Trebnikh (Missal) or Izbornik (Verse) in their book titles,
Futurists referred to religious texts, thereby creating a link
between their works and manuscripts.17 The link is further established by the use of archaic lettering and handwritten transcriptions in books such as Explodity by
Kruchenykh (1913; pp. 72, 73), and I! by Vladimir
Maya-kovsky (1913; p. 89). In Pavel Filonov’s transcription of two poems in Velimir Khlebnikov’s A Selection of
Poems with an Afterword by the Wordsmith: 1907–1914
(1914; p. 90), the ornamentation and anthropomorphism
of letters present a particularly rich example of a modern
adaptation of the traditional treatment of text in manuscripts (see fig. 1). Here the arrangement of text and
illustrations also resembles Old Russian manuscripts.18
Rozanova and Goncharova also adopted manuscript-like layouts in their respective editions of A Game
in Hell (pp. 70, 80, 81), such as that of the early-sixteenth-century example shown here (fig. 2). Rozanova’s
devils show a similar correspondence to those in the
manuscript; in Goncharova’s edition, the vertical, narrowly compressed, single-figure portraits suggest a parody of
her own monumental series of paintings titled
Evangelists,19 and reveal additional connections to icons
and miniatures.
Futurist artists’ interpretations of religious
images and sacred subjects were often out of favor with
the general public and the authorities, and occasionally,
unacceptable. A depiction of St. George by Vladimir
Burliuk in the anthology Roaring Parnassus (1914; p. 71)
played a central part in the book’s confiscation and
censorship, perceived by the Petersburg Commission on
Printing Affairs as a clear “desecration of a sacred
image, and an obscene affront to holy subjects and sanctity.”20 In addition to the artist’s trademark dislocation of
the subject’s eye, Vladimir’s publication of the image in
the company of his brother David’s three-breasted nude
women and pelvic-centric “sacks of lard” (as Burliuk
himself referred to them)21 added an extra element of
offense. Similar subversions of sacred images and art
forms were created by Sergei Podgaevskii in Futurist
Sergei Podgaevskii’s Easter Egg,22 in which the artist’s
illustration “Resurrection” is an abstract, petroglyph-like
potato cut (1914; p. 79), and in Khlebnikov’s collection
of verse, in which Filonov’s tribute to the Old Russian
manuscript tradition becomes slightly less orthodox, considering that the figure to whom the poem is devoted,
Perun, the God of Lightning and Thunder, is the chief
deity of Russian paganism.
Another source to which books such as
Goncharova’s A Game in Hell show clear reference are
blockbooks of the nineteenth century—illustrated stories
cheaply printed on a single sheet of paper, then folded
into book form. Blockbooks are an extension of lubki, or
popular prints, both of which are generally considered to
be “low” art. Aesthetic elements of lubki that are most
evident in book illustrations include: the inseparability
and arrangement of text and image on the page; flattened or inverse perspective and non-scientific proportions; an economy of means defined by simplicity of
drawing, flowing lines, and a lack of superfluous detail;
and a bold, non-naturalistic, unbounded use of color.
35
PRIMITIVISM IN RUSSIAN FUTURIST BOOK DESIGN
Fig. 3. The Tale of How the Workman
Fooled the Devil. Moscow, 1882.
Lithograph with watercolor and
gouache additions, 6 15⁄16 x 14 9⁄16”
(17.7 x 37 cm). The Russian
Museum, St. Petersburg
Lubki depict subjects ranging from saints and
apostles to historical battles and heroes and images of
everyday village life. Relying heavily upon folk epic,
satire, puns, and anecdotes, the lubok is recognized for
the degree to which it “‘retains its primitive character
and . . . ancient crudeness of taste,’ in contrast to the
Western orientation of professional Russian art to which
Peter the Great had directed it.”23 It was precisely the
vulgarity, sincerity, and popular spirit of these models to
which Futurists were drawn, while artists against whom
they were reacting, those associated with the World of
Art, “tended to ‘aestheticize’ popular culture, remove
‘vulgarity,’ and streamline it for consumption by an elegant, educated, and sophisticated clientele.”24
In some instances, artists presented their own
interpretations of popular lubki, such as Ivan Puni’s
childlike rendering of “Susanna and the Elders”25 for
Roaring Parnassus and Rozanova and Malevich’s edition
of A Game in Hell (p. 80), a poem that Kruchenykh
admits having conceived of as “an ironic, lubok-inspired,
parody of the archaic devil”26 (fig. 3). The text in
Futurist books also mirrors that of lubki, in which misspellings and manual corrections, such as superscript and
subscript letter insertions and crossed-out words, add an
extra degree of crudeness, purity, and non-refinement.
Hand-painted copies are among the most distinctive, cherished, and celebrated examples of Russian
Futurist book design, and offer the clearest connection
to the lubok. In Neo-Primitivism, Shevchenko identifies
the “running color, i. e., color passing beyond the contour of an object,” found in Old Believers’ lubki and
Russian icons as exemplary representations of movement
and vitality.27
Rozanova’s hand-painted editions stand out as
especially dynamic, innovative achievements. In her
hand-colored copies of A Little Duck’s Nest . . . of Bad
Words by Kruchenykh (1913; pp. 76, 77), Rozanova
“imitates no one and tackles problems which no one
before her had confronted. . . . She gives the illustrations,
Fig. 4. Shaman’s drum. 19th century. Leather, wood, and metal,
221⁄16” (56 cm) diam. Peter the
Great Museum of Anthropology and
Ethnography, St. Petersburg
Fig. 5. Recumbent deer with birdheaded antler tines. Scythian. 5th
century B.C. Gold. From Ak-Mechet,
Crimea. Rendering by Lynn-Marie
Kara. Original in the Hermitage, St.
Petersburg
Fig. 6. Poletop in the shape of a
bird’s head with superimposed
imagery and hanging bells. 6th
century B.C. Bronze. Rendering by
Lynn-Marie Kara. Original in the
Hermitage, St. Petersburg
36
PRIMITIVISM IN RUSSIAN FUTURIST BOOK DESIGN
or rather the color treatment of the book, a particular
role. . . . Not only the illustrations but the pages of text,
too, are colored. . . . Rozanova looks for the inner, emotional interaction between color and word. . . . The
‘action’ of color invading the figurative fabric of the
verse reconstructs the whole book ‘organism’ along new
lines.”28 Rozanova further exploits color to achieve an
even greater cohesion of text and illustration in Te li le
(1914; pp. 84, 85), one of the crowning achievements
of Russian Futurist book design, with its paradigmatic
synthesis of painting and poetry.
In their essay “Poetic Principles,” Nikolai and
David Burliuk note: “In the transition from iconographic
to symbolic to phonetic script we lost the skeleton of the
language and ended up with verbal rickets. Only a deeprooted good taste saved our copyists and painters, who
embellished capital letters and inscriptions on signboards. Often, only barbarism can save art.”29 Painted
shop signs, directed at a population defined by “total
(with no exaggeration) illiteracy,” were considered by
artists like David Burliuk to be works in which “the
people’s genius for painting found its only realization”
with “ no analogies” in Western culture.30 These signs
appealed to Russian Futurists for many of the same reasons that lubki did. Both offered a boldness of color and
easily recognizable and often amusing iconography; there
was a naïveté to the renderings and an imaginative relationship of text to illustration.
Artists also found inspiration in the work of children. For the cover of Elena Guro’s posthumously published Baby Camels of the Sky (1914; p. 71), Mikhail
Matiushin used a drawing by Guro’s seven-year-old
niece.31 Kruchenykh listed Zina V., a fourteen-year-old
girl, as his co-author for Piglets (1913; p. 74); he also
compiled and published a collection entitled Actual
Stories and Drawings by Children (1914; p. 71). Il’ia
Rogovin’s illustrated transcription of Khlebnikov’s poem
“About Dostoevsky” in Worldbackwards (1912; pp. 68,
69), and drawings by David Burliuk, Mayakovsky, and
Puni for Roaring Parnassus (1914; p. 71) and Missal of
the Three: A Collection of Poems and Drawings show a
clear affinity for children’s art. Deliberate attempts to
achieve “infantile” truth and purity were made by using
a variety of unsophisticated printing methods, including
a child’s handheld type set,32 and printing texts replete
with crossed-out words, manual corrections, misspellings, backward letters, and arbitrary capitalization.33
Shamanic rituals and decorated objects of
nomadic peoples scattered across Siberia and Central
Asia provided Futurist artists with an indigenous repository of “tribal” art. The Dashkov Ethnographic Collection
in Moscow was an exceptional repository of shamanic
costumes, ritual objects, and documentary materials,34
and shamanic dances were performed at the Union of
Youth in St. Petersburg and at the Polytechnic Museum
in Moscow in 1911.35 Khlebnikov’s “Shaman and
Venus,” first published in A Trap for Judges II, and
poems by Kruchenykh influenced by shamanic chants
find visual parallels in illustrations by Nikolai Kul’bin
for Explodity (1913; pp. 72, 73), and Larionov for
Worldbackwards (1912; pp. 68, 69) and Half-Alive
(1913; p. 83). These drawings suggest that their artists
have borrowed symbols and stylistic devices from ritualrelated art and decorated objects, most notably shamanic drums (fig. 4), and horse sticks, which are central ceremonial implements in making spiritual journeys to other
worlds.36
Whereas primitivism in early-twentieth-century
Western art manifested itself predominantly in the conventional art forms of painting, sculpture, and prints,
primitivism in Russia extended nearly simultaneously
into poetry and literature. The aim of Russian artists to
free art from the restrictions of naturalism and common
sense, and to create distinctly Russian art forms was
paralleled in poetry by the efforts and aspirations of
Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov. Just as Goncharova,
Larionov, Rozanova, and the Burliuks seized upon the
simplicity, innocence, and purity of lubki, icons, manuscripts, and Russian folklore, poets, too, turned to these
forms, as well as to ritual language and prayers of
Russian religious sectarians.
These poets and other writers sought a renewal
of language from its very roots, and proclaimed their
inalienable right to word creation, in “an attempt to give
back to the word and image the primordial purity and
immediacy they had lost. What had once been a poetic
image, with time had become transformed into a verbal
cliché, depleted from overuse and stripped of emotional
impulses.”37 Their pursuit of a primeval Russian language led them to expand the scope of their retrospection to antiquity, mythology, and prehistory. As Anna
Lawton notes, “Their search for the ‘word as such’” propelled the Russian Futurists on a “voyage backward to a
prehistoric age, where words sprouted like fragrant flowers in the virgin human soul, . . . where the word in its
pristine purity created myth; and where the human
being, in a prelogical state of mind, through the word
discovered the universe.”38
In his poem “The Burial Mound of Sviatogur”
(1908), Khlebnikov posed the question: “Will we forever
remain mockingbirds, imitating Western songs?”39 He
advocated purging the Russian language of Western
words, and finding replacements for them in the vocabularies of other Slavic peoples.40 In a letter to Kruchenykh
dated August 13, 1913, he wrote: “For me, the important thing is to remember that the elements of poetry are
elemental forces. . . . The life of Pushkin’s time and circle thought and spoke a foreign tongue, translating into
Russian. As a result lots of words are missing. Others
languish in the captivity of Slavic dialects.”41
Kruchenykh shared Khlebnikov’s dismay about
the languid state of Russian language and poetry. It was
precisely the desire to recover the primordialness of
Russian and the elemental forces of poetry that led to
Kruchenykh’s landmark poem “Dyr bul shchyl,” composed entirely of unknown words and formed from
sounds unique to the Russian language.42 First published in Pomade (1913; p. 67), the poem was hailed by
Kruchenykh for possessing “more of the Russian national
spirit than in all of Pushkin.”43
In their denunciation and renouncement of
Western trends and culture, Russian Futurists saw parallels between themselves and legendary figures and peoples from their country’s glorious, barbaric past: Stenka
[Stepan] Razin, “a renegade Cossack,” who, in 1670,
“summoned the masses to seize their freedom, take the
land, destroy the nobility and establish selfgovernment,”44 and was executed for acts against the
Church and for fostering a revival of paganism; and,
most notably, the Scythians, indefatigable warriors on
horseback cited by Herodotus for their intolerant rejection of foreign practices and beliefs.45
In 1913 the Burliuks and their associates
(Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky, Kruchenykh, and Benedikt
Livshits) adopted the name Gileia for their circle. In
classical history Gileia is the setting of some of the
deeds of Hercules and is the name by which the ancient
Greeks referred to Chernianka, an area in the Ukraine
near Kherson, the Dnieper River, and the Black Sea,
inhabited by Scythians in the time of antiquity and by
the Burliuk family from 1907 to 1914. Larionov,
Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh, and Livshits all visited the
Burliuks during this time, and in Livshits’s opinion, it is
Gileia that provided “the intersection of those co-ordinates which brought forth the movement in Russian
poetry and painting called Futurism.”46
The Burliuks’ home was surrounded by vast
expanses of the steppes and Scythian burial mounds,
ongoing excavations of which enabled the Burliuks and
their guests to view Scythian art forms in situ, as well as
in the archaeological museum of Kherson. Livshits
recalls that the Burliuks worked in their studio surrounded by “Scythian jugs of bristling brushes, planes and
palette-knives and brass Turkestan vessels of unknown
use.”47 Since the year of their move to Chernianka in
1907, Vladimir and the Burliuks’ father were involved in
activities related to the study of Scythian culture.48
The references to Scythian art, most prominent
in the drawings of the Burliuks, range from the superficial and iconographic to profoundly sophisticated and
informed adaptations of the central principles and
devices of Scythian expression. In some instances, the
illustrations are presented in the form of Scythian artifacts themselves. In drawings by Vladimir Burliuk for
Works, 1906–1908 (1914) and other publications of the
period, the artist decorated the borders with a row of
holes, which give the images the appearance of decorative plaques, similar to those the Scythians affixed to
their clothing or their bow and arrow quivers and other
objects (see fig. 5).
The depiction of forms and figures with different orientations is one of the most common devices used
by Scythian artists to portray movement, a distinctive
and fundamental principle of Scythian art.49 Just as the
example in fig. 5 reveals new subjects as it is rotated
and viewed at different angles, the Burliuks’ illustrations
employ a similar lack of fixed orientation: animals and
other figures are depicted upside down, at ninety-degree
rotations, and running in various directions along the
borders of an image.
37
PRIMITIVISM IN RUSSIAN FUTURIST BOOK DESIGN
Fig. 7. DAVID BURLIUK AND
VLADIMIR BURLIUK. “Peasant
and Horses,” The Croaked Moon
by David Burliuk, Nikolai
Burliuk, Velimir Khlebnikov, et
al. 1913. Lithograph by D.
Burliuk, 7 11⁄16 x 5 15⁄16” (19.5 x
15.1 cm). Ed.: 1,000.
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Gift of The Judith
Rothschild Foundation
The isolation of the animal and the depiction
of only its most essential parts are other devices adopted
by the Burliuks from Scythian art (see fig. 6).50 In
“Peasant and Horses” (fig. 7), an illustration for The
Croaked Moon (1913; p. 64), David Burliuk combines
the principle of rotation with the Scythians’ tendency to
place disparate images in dense arrangements. A drawing by Vladimir for Milk of Mares (1914; fig. 8), whose
title itself refers to one of the most distinguishing features of Scythian culture,51 shows that he possesses not
only an understanding of the prominence of the bird
motif in Scythian imagery, but also an awareness of this
tendency toward isolation.
Transformation and evolution represented by the
emergence of one form or figure from another are
Scythian principles that the Burliuks transferred to their
own works. In an illustration by David for the First
Journal of the Russian Futurists (1914), a human face
emerges from a horse’s rump. In another illustration by
Vladimir for the same journal (fig. 9), he adapts the
Scythian practice of using one form or figure as a container for others; in this instance, when the image is
turned ninety degrees clockwise, the chariotlike form
becomes the eye and beak of a bird of prey. The horse’s
ears are transformed into the head of another animal,
shown in profile.
Other artists were inspired by the structural and
aesthetic properties of stone statues that stood atop
Scythian burial mounds in the Ukraine. The true origins
and purposes of these statues remain unknown, thereby
presenting ideal models for artists and poets seeking
subject matter without fixed meanings or concrete associations.52 “Stone maidens,” found in the fields of
Eurasia and Siberia and in the ethnographic museums of
Fig. 8. DAVID BURLIUK AND VLADIMIR
BURLIUK. Milk of Mares: Drawings,
Verse, Prose by David Burliuk,
Nikolai Burliuk, Vasilii Kamenskii,
et al. 1914. Lithograph by V.
Burliuk, 7 11⁄16 x 4 15⁄16” (19.5 x
12.5 cm). Ed.: 400. The Museum
of Modern Art, New York. Gift of
The Judith Rothschild Foundation
Fig. 9. DAVID BURLIUK, VLADIMIR
BURLIUK, ALEXANDRA EXTER, AND
VASILII KAMENSKII. Futurists: First
Journal of the Russian Futurists.
1914. Lithograph (detail) by V.
Burliuk, 9 7⁄8 x 7 1⁄4” (25.1 x
18.5 cm). Ed.: unknown. The
Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Gift of The Judith Rothschild
Foundation
Fig. 10. Idol from an excavation
near Dolmatov and Akulinino,
Moscow region. N.d. Stone, height
approx. 12” (30.5 cm). State
Historical Museum, Moscow
38
PRIMITIVISM IN RUSSIAN FUTURIST BOOK DESIGN
St. Petersburg and Moscow, also served as models (fig.
10). These maidens, prominent subjects in Goncharova’s
early Neo-primitive paintings, also appear in the artist’s
illustrations for Gardeners over the Vines (1913; p. 87)
and in Worldbackwards. Larionov borrowed aesthetic and
structural elements from archaic sculptural forms for his
drawings as well. His totemlike illustrations for Half-Alive
and Pomade resemble wooden and stone idols from a
range of prehistoric periods, discovered in archaeological
excavations in Russia and the Ukraine in the second half
of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the
twentieth century.53
The variety of primitive forms and images to
which Russian Futurists were drawn, despite their apparent differences in temporal origin or outward appearance, share two fundamental distinctions: stylistically, all
are examples of pure, direct expression of the spirit and
inner soul, unimpeded by academicism, scientific knowledge, or common sense; and thematically, all are images
that in themselves, or in their renderings by modern
artists, defy the conventions, accepted trends, and established norms of the traditional livre d’artiste. Although the
forms were familiar to the educated observer as well as to
the general public, the Futurists threw a new light on
them by placing them in unconventional contexts and thus
suggesting uncommon interpretations.54
While rooted in tradition, Russian Futurists were
not mired in it; national art forms merely provided
Russian Futurists with a point of departure toward undiscovered and unexploited creative experiments. The novelty, dynamism, and monumentality of tradition-inspired
achievements made by Rozanova and others within the
medium of the illustrated book are perhaps best evidenced by the fact that A Little Duck’s Nest and
Te li le—both with clear and deliberate references to traditional art forms—were included in the International
Futurist Free Exhibition at the Sprovieri Gallery in Rome
in 191455 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of
Italian Futurism, a devoted champion of modern technology and the epitome of anti-traditionalism.
As Kruchenykh recalls in his memoirs, “With
the wrapping and wallpaper of our first anthologies,
books and declarations, we launched an attack on the
extravagant tastelessness of the bourgeois[ie’s] verges
and gilded bindings, stuffed with the diseased pearls
and drunken lilies of gentle little boys.”56 With pages of
poor-quality paper of various sizes, weights, and colors,
and text printed by lithographed handwriting, handheld
type, and rubber stamps, Futurist collaborations further
expressed the anti-academicism and anti-conventionalism of their creators, and issued a direct challenge to
the exaggerated elegance, lavish illustrations, and premium papers of the traditional livre d’artiste. The book
became another means by which artists and poets
reclaimed art and literature from their esteemed positions and blurred the lines between “high” and “low” by
re-interpreting, and expanding upon, the iconography
and aesthetic principles of popular, indigenous art forms.
The extent to which Russian Futurists explored
primitivism within the medium of the illustrated book,
and the degree to which Futurist book design is indebted
to primitivism are unparalleled among Western contemporaries of the same period. The celebration of the primacy of the primary artistic elements (color, texture, and
form), the spirituality and experience of the creative
process, and the tradition-inspired innovation that
Russian Futurist artists and writers realized in their first
five years of book design held significant implications for
publications in subsequent years. Elements of traditional
Russian art forms, particularly lubki, prevail in works of
Judaica, children’s books, and printed propaganda of the
post-revolutionary years. Even certain books published in
the 1920s and 1930s reflect the chief characteristics
and creative spirit of early Futurist publications.
NOTES
1 William Rubin, “Modernist
Primitivism: An Introduction,”
in Rubin, ed., “Primitivism” in
20th Century Art: Affinity of
the Tribal and the Modern (New
York: The Museum of Modern
Art, 1984), p. 1.
2 For more on primitivism in
Western Europe, see Robert
Goldwater, Primitivism in
Modern Art, enl. ed.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap
Press, 1986); Charles Harrison,
Francis Frascina, and Gillian
Perry, Primitivism, Cubism,
Abstraction: The Early
Twentieth Century (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1993);
Peter Selz, German
Expressionist Painting
(Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press,
1974); and Jill Lloyd, German
Expressionism: Primitivism and
Modernity (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1991).
3 Sergei Makovsky, “Golubaia
Roza,” Stranitsy khudozhestvennoi kritiki, St. Petersburg
[1909], book 2, p. 147, quoted in John E. Bowlt, “Neoprimitivism and Russian
Painting,” The Burlington
Magazine 116, no. 852 (Mar.
1974): 134.
4 Dubl’-Ve, “Vystavka sovremennykh techenii v iskusstve,”
Petersburgskii listok, April 26,
1908, p. 2; quoted in Boris M.
Kalaushin, ed., Burliuk, tsvet i
rifma (St. Petersburg: Apollon,
1995), p. 63.
5 A. Timofeev, “Venok,” Rul’ 8
(January 18, 1908), p. 28,
quoted in Kalaushin, ed.,
Burliuk, p. 651.
6 Aleksandr Shevchenko, Neoprimitivizm. Ego teoriia, ego
vozmozhnosti, ego dostizheniia
(Moscow: Izd. avtora, 1913),
pp. 21–22; Eng. trans. in John
E. Bowlt, ed., Russian Art of
the Avant-Garde: Theory and
Criticism, 1902–1934, 2nd
ed. (New York: Viking Press,
1988), p. 50. Similar ideas are
expressed by Albert Gleizes and
Jean Metzinger in Du Cubisme
(Paris: E. Figuière, 1912),
which appeared in Russian
translation in 1913, and by
Vasily Kandinsky, in
“Concerning the Spiritual in
Art” (1911), reprinted in
Charles Harrison and Paul
Wood, eds., Art in Theory,
1900–1990: An Anthology of
39
PRIMITIVISM IN RUSSIAN FUTURIST BOOK DESIGN
Changing Ideas (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992), p. 87.
7 Shevchenko, Neo-primitivizm,
p. 8.
8 David Burliuk, preface to Venok
exhibition catalogue, November
1908, in Bowlt, ed., Russian
Art, p. 11.
9 D[avid] Burliuk, “The ‘Savages’
of Russia,” in Wassily
Kandinsky and Franz Marc,
eds., The Blaue Reiter Almanac
(Munich: R. Piper Verlag,
1912); documentary ed.,
Klaus Lenkheit, ed. (New York:
Viking Press, 1974), p. 79.
10 Shevchenko, Neo-primitivizm,
p. 13.
11 Vladimir Markov, “Printsipy
novogo iskusstva” [first part],
Soiuz molodezhi 1 (Apr. 1912):
8; Eng. trans. in Bowlt, ed.,
Russian Art, p. 27.
12 Through private collections and
ethnographic and archaeological museums in Moscow and
St. Petersburg, Russian artists
knew art forms from a multitude of cultures from around
the world. The collection of
Peter the Great in St.
Petersburg and the Dashkov
Ethnographic Collection of the
Rumiantsev Museum in
Moscow had tens of thousands
of objects and artworks
acquired through expeditions
and donations. The sketchbooks of Olga Rozanova document her visits to these collections: “[There are drawings of]
Scythian stone statues, . . .
Tungusian shamans, wooden
Enisei and North American
idols, fragments of Buddhist
icons, and Egyptian motifs, all
provided with meticulous
explanatory notes” (Nina
Gurianova, Exploring Color: Olga
Rozanova and the Early Russian
Avant-Garde, 1910–1918
(Amsterdam: G & B Arts
International, 2000), p. 19.
13 Evgenii Kovtun, “Experiments
in Book Design by Russian
Artists,” The Journal of
Decorative and Propaganda Arts
5 (summer 1987): 51.
14 A. Kruchenykh and V.
Khlebnikov, “Bukva kak takovaia” [“The Letter as Such”],
1913, in A. Kruchenykh, ed.,
Neizdannyi Khlebnikov
(Moscow: Izd. gruppy druzei
Khlebnikova, 1930), vol. 18,
p. 7.
15 D. Burliuk, E. Guro, N. Burliuk,
V. Mayakovsky, K. Nizen, V.
Khlebnikov, B. Livshits, and A.
Kruchenykh, untitled manifesto, A Trap for Judges II (St.
Petersburg: Zhuravl’, 1913),
n.p.
16 N. and D. Burliuk,
“Poeticheskiia nachala,” Pervyi
zhurnal russkikh futuristov, no.
12 (1914): 82.
17 The reference to the Izbornik
Sviatoslava of 1073 is noted
by A. E. Parnis in his essay, “O
metamorfozakh, olenia, i voina.
K probleme dialoga Khlebnikova i Filonova,” in Parnis, ed.,
Mir Velimira Khlebnikova: Stati
issledovaniia 1911–1998
(Moscow: Iazyk russkoi kultury,
2000), p. 645.
18 See examples in G. I. Vzdornov,
Iskusstvo knigi v Drevnei Rusi:
Rukopisnaia kniga SeveroVostochnoi Rusi XII-nachala XV
vekov (Moscow: Iskusstvo,
1980), cat. no. 108 and
others.
19 N. I. Khardzhiev, “Pamiati
Natalii Goncharovoi
(1881–1962) i Mikhaila
Larionova (1881–1964),”
Iskusstvo knigi 5 (1968),
reprinted in Khardzhiev, Stati
ob avangarde, edited by V.
Rakitin and A. Sarabianov
(Moscow: Arkhiv russkogo avangarda, 1997), vol. 1, p. 220.
20 Notes of the January 31,
1914, session of the
Petersburg Commission on
Printing Affairs (quoted in
G[leb] Iu. Ershov, “Knizhnaia
grafika P. N. Filonova,”
Russkaia i zarubezhnaia grafika
v fondakh Gosudarstvennoi
Publichnoi biblioteki im. M. E.
Saltykova-Shchedrina: sbornik
nauchnykh tudov, comp. and
edited by E. V. Barkhatova
[Leningrad: Gosudarstvennaia
Publichnaia biblioteka imeni
M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina,
1991], p. 65).
21 Aleksei Kruchenykh, Nash
vykhod. K istorii russkogo futurizma, edited by R. Duganov
(Moscow: RA, 1996), p. 84.
22 Also commonly translated as
Jottings of the Futurist Sergei
Podgaevskii, the translation
used here was suggested in
conversation with Nina
Gurianova, who recognized the
word pysanka as the Ukrainian
word for Easter egg, and which
is entirely logical in view of the
book’s thematic content and
visual elements.
23 I. Snegirev, “O prostonarodnykh izobrazheniiakh,” Trudy
Obshchestva liubitelei
Rossiiskoi slavesnosti pri
Moskovskom Universitete,
chap. 4 (Moscow, 1824),
p. 126; quoted in Alla Sytova,
The Lubok: Russian Folk
Pictures 17th to 19th Century
(Leningrad: Aurora, c. 1984),
p. 10.
24 John E. Bowlt, “A Brazen CanCan in the Temple of Art: The
Russian Avant-Garde and
Popular Culture,” in Kirk
Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik,
eds., Modern Art and Popular
Culture: Readings in High and
Low (New York: The Museum of
Modern Art, 1990), p. 136.
25 Several variants of a lubok of
the same name are in Russkiia
narodnyia kartinki. Sobral i
opisal D. A. Rovinskii.
Posmertnyi trud. pechatan pod
nabliudeniem N. P. Sovko (St.
Petersburg: Izd. P. Golike,
1900), cat. nos. 841–43.
26 Kruchenykh, Nash vykhod,
p. 50.
27 Shevchenko, Neoprimitivizm,
pp. 25–26; Eng. trans. in
Bowlt, ed., Russian Art, p. 52.
28 Kovtun, “Experiments in Book
Design,” pp. 53–54.
29 N. and D. Burliuk, “Poeticheskiia nachala,” p. 82; Eng.
trans. in Anna Lawton and
Herbert Eagle, eds., Russian
Futurism through Its
Manifestoes, 1912–1928
(Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1988), p. 83.
30 David Burliuk, “On CottageCraft in Art,” Moscow Gazette,
February 25, 1913; reprinted
in Alla Povelikhina and Yeygeny
Kovtun, Russian Printed Shop
Signs and Avant-Garde Artists
(Leningrad: Aurora, 1991), p.
186.
31 Mikhail Matiushin,”Russkie
kubofuturisty. Vospominaniia
Mikhaila Matiushina,” in
Khardzhiev, Stati ob avangarde,
vol. 1, p. 159.
32 Vladimir Poliakov, Knigi
russkikh kubofuturizma
(Moscow: Gileia, 1998),
p. 243.
33 The interest of Russian
Futurist artists and poets in
children’s art is discussed at
length in Gleb Pospelov,
“Larionov and Children’s
Drawings,” and Yuri Molok,
“Children’s Drawing in Russian
Futurism,” in Jonathan
40
Fineberg, ed., Discovering Child
Art: Essays on Childhood,
Primitivism, and Modernism
(Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1998).
34 See Piatidesiatiletie
Rumiantskago Muzeia v
Moskve, 1862–1912 (Moscow,
1913), p. 174.
35 Anthony Parton, Mikhail
Larionov and the Russian
Avant-Garde (Princeton:
Princeton University Press,
1993), p. 102.
36 For a discussion of the influence of these rituals and
objects on Kandinsky’s art, see
Peg Weiss, Kandinsky and Old
Russia: The Artist as
Ethnographer and Shaman
(New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1995), p. 77. Anthony
Parton draws a direct connection between Buryat mythology
and iconography and Larionov’s
book graphics, noting that
Larionov himself owned an original Buryat drawing (see
Parton, Mikhail Larionov,
pp. 96–112).
37 Kovtun, “Experiments in Book
Design,” p. 47.
38 Lawton and Eagle, eds.,
Russian Futurism, p. 18.
39 Velimir Khlebnikov, “The
Burial Mound of Sviatogur” in
Charlotte Douglas, ed.,
Collected Works of Velimir
Khlebnikov, Vol. I: Letters and
Theoretical Writings
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1987),
p. 233.
40 See Khlebnikov’s letter to
Kruchenykh, early 1913,
reprinted in ibid., p. 73.
41 Cited in ibid., p. 82.
42 A. Kruchenykh, unpublished
writing, 1959, quoted in N. I.
Khardzhiev, “Sud’ba
Kruchenykh,” Svantevit: Dansk
Tiddkrift for Slavistik, 1975;
reprinted in Khardzhiev, Stati
ob avangarde, vol. 1, p. 301.
43 A. Kruchenykh and V.
Khlebnikov, Slovo kak takovoe
(Moscow, 1913), p. 9.
44 Frank M. Bartholomew, “The
Russian Utopia,” in E. D. S.
Sullivan, ed., The Utopian
Vision: Seven Essays on the
Quincentennial of Sir Thomas
More (San Diego: San Diego
State University Press, 1983),
p. 74.
45 Herodotus, The Histories,
trans. Aubrey de Selincourt.
Rev. ed. (London: Penguin
PRIMITIVISM IN RUSSIAN FUTURIST BOOK DESIGN
Books, 1996), book IV, p. 239.
46 Benedikt Livshits, The One
and a Half-Eyed Archer [1933],
trans. by John E. Bowlt
(Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental
Research Partners, 1977),
pp. 58–59.
47 Ibid., p. 48.
48 Between 1907 and 1911
David and Vladimir Burliuk took
part in excavating nearly fifty
tombs in the Crimea
(Katherine S. Dreier, Burliuk
[New York: The Société
Anonyme, 1944], pp. 49–50).
See also Ekaterina Bobrinskaia,
“’Skifstvo’v russkoi kulture
nachala XX veka i skifskaia
tema u russkikh futuristov,” in
Bobrinskaia, Rannii russkii
avangard v kontekste filosofskoii i khudozhestvennoi
kultury rubezha vekov: ocherki
(Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi
institut iskusstvoznaniia,
1999), p. 200, n. 129.
49 Ellen Reeder, “Scythian Art,”
in Reeder, ed., Scythian Gold:
Treasures from Ancient Ukraine
(Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery,
1999), p. 43.
50 Ibid., p. 46.
51 Herodotus, The Histories, book
IV, p. 217.
52 In this regard, the appeal that
Scythian statues held for the
Russian avant-garde is similar
to the impact that African art
had on the French Cubists.
See Jack Flam, “Matisse and
the Fauves,” in Rubin, ed.,
“Primitivism” in 20th Century
Art, p. 212.
53 See Avant les Scythes; prehistoire de l’art en U.R.S.S.
(Paris: Editions de la réunion
des musées nationaux, 1979)
for examples of prehistoric figures and petroglyphs found in
Odessa and surrounding areas
between 1900 and 1910
whose forms resemble
Larionov’s.
54 Aleksei Kruchenykh, “Novye
puti slova,” reprinted in
Vladimir Markov, ed., Manifesty
i programmy russkikh futuristov
(Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag,
1967), p. 72.
55 See “Esposizione Libera
Futurista Internazionale,” in
Donald E. Gordon, Modern Art
Exhibitions, 1900–1916
(Munich: Prestel, 1974),
vol. 2, p. 813.
56 Kruchenykh, Nash vykhod,
p. 94.